AN: Happy Halloween!
Natalie walked through Amity's downtown that afternoon. The typically bustling center for shopping and meet-ups was, pardon the pun, a ghost town. People didn't stick around long, speed-walking from whatever shop to their car and back again. Restaurants, bars, and the teen 'hangout' spots were nearly empty. The most she'd see was a couldn't-care-less goth boy slurping a smoothie and tapping away at his phone in one of the many vacant tables.
She passed by an ATM, or rather what was left of it in the gaping hole where it used to be embedded in the bank's wall. Scattered wiring and plastic pieces littered the spot, but the rest was cleanly gone, not even a dollar left on the pavement. Yellow police tape cornered the sector of sidewalk from the rest of the walkway.
A little further, an antiques store with the glass smashed from the inside-out where shards glinted on the sidewalk. The entire inventory of valuable jewelry, furniture, collectibles, and even tacky chotchkes had disappeared.
She sighed, as she spotted red and blue lights flashing ahead. A police cruiser had parked itself outside of a jewelry store that looked like it had been the site of a mini-tornado, except a twister with a talent for picking up shiny objects. Not even an earring was left behind.
Passing by a pair of officers, she overheard one exasperatedly mutter 'third one last night' as he downed his coffee desperately.
She chewed her lip with uneasiness. It wasn't just the stores and major marks, this crime-spree spread into the neighborhoods with home invasions being listed off left and right. Nobody was hurt, but nobody ever saw who did it in the first place. Just waking up in the middle of the night to an odd sound and finding your TV set missing and the front door forced open. Or sometimes not even realizing it until they were making breakfast the next morning!
Toby texted her, saying his mom's jewelry had been stolen just the other night. Someone had broken in and taken it from right out of a jewelry box she kept in her bedroom. She had been sleeping not even five feet away.
It rattled him badly.
He was helping her file insurance claims and police reports, so Mr. Lindermann had given him the week off. Actually, he'd given all of them the week off. Not just because several expensive instruments and decor had been stolen from the funeral home as well.
People wanted answers and the nobody seemed to have them. No security footage ever caught anything. Any that should have caught something, either caught distorted static or were completely wiped with no trace how the burglars could've done it. But people had a pretty strong hunch.
The scale of the crime-spree, the distance these strikes were making, and the fact that nobody saw it being done led a lot of people to speculating that ghosts were the culprits, once again. The theories had actually gained a lot of traction, to the point Mayor Masters had begun sending out squads of his little 'patrol-squads' to stalk around the streets as a constant, underlying presence despite them never seeming to do much.
But rumors were spreading that Masters may be looking at more proactive methods to scope out and hunt down the criminals, ghost, human, or whatever in-between.
Speaking of...
She absently looked into the sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of a black figure gliding through the air, but it was as empty as always.
The public were starting to murmur distrustfully to one another about Phantom's sudden disappearance. Again. They just got him back after that weird copy-cat was flying around (which turned out to still "be him", but that was beside the point) and now he dropped off the face of the earth again.
As a ghost, she wouldn't have been too worried. After all, what would he do? Die again?
But as Danny, the quirky kid she'd met in Mr. Lindermann's office? As Sam's friend? As the guy she knew beneath the superhero-hood... she was worried for him.
It didn't settle right with her. This whole situation just screamed not good.
"Clocky!" She turned to see Sam, running to catch up to her. As she approached, she lowered her voice to ask, "Have you seen Danny around?"
Not good at all...
The dark, dismal room flickered with candlelight. The wafting perfume of incense and wilted flowers permeated the air. The figures around their table wore their cloaks over their heads.
At last, the Necromancy Club's dark cabal had returned. With topics of great importance.
"Chills, man! Serious chills!" The Alchemist exclaimed giddily. "That 'Jack' guy was nuts! That kid looked so scared."
"Psh," The Mage dismissed. "He was probably in on the act the whole time. No way would they let some random guy pull a stunt that dangerous without waivers out their ears. My uncle's a lawyer and he says stunt performers have contracts a mile long to make sure the circus or whatever doesn't get sued for injury or death."
"But it's Circus Gothica!" The Summoner emphasized. "Seriously think for a minute. If any creepy circus is able to make a bad stunt or a mishandled volunteer 'disappear', if you get my meaning, it'd be them." He nodded emphatically with his own reasoning.
"It's the 21st century, man," The Exorcist scoffed, scarfing down another handful of Cheetos from the bowl on the table. "People can't get away with that stuff anymore."
"That you know of," the other whisper-shouted 'eerily'.
"He wasn't an actor."
The group turned to their only female member. Miranda (The Witch) had yet to really look up from her phone the entire 'meeting'.
It wasn't anything official, just an excuse to get together and talk about the Circus Gothica performances they saw. As a club, they unanimously agreed this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and went as a group. 'Safety in numbers' and all that.
It lived up to its macabre reputation, and Mitch (The Scholar) made off with a fake (?) shrunken head prize from one of the stalls.
She continued, "The kid's name is Danny Fenton. He's a friend of Sam's," The group nodded, familiar with the semi-official member of the club. "Apparently, it was completely random, no waivers, no pre-selection. Just Danny under the spotlight out of the blue and then strapped to that torture-wheel."
"Holy… so, those knives were real?" The Scholar asked incredulously. "The act was real? He was actually on that thing?!"
"Mmm-hmm," She nodded.
"Woah…"
The group returned to their murmurs, thinking back to the 'audience-participation' in a new light. Meanwhile, Miranda hadn't given much thought past reading her phone's updates.
There was another ghost alert. No one got seriously hurt and the ghost vanished before the mayor's 'special ops' team or whatever showed up. It was almost immediately after the massive crime-wave that these ghosts started popping up all over town. It helped solidify the theory that ghosts were the actual crime-wave instigators, but the police had yet to recover all of the stolen property.
Just a half-hour ago, there was a warning that a trenchcoated ghost with a fedora (very stereotypically 'stranger danger') was popping out of mailboxes and gnashing at people before scattering mail and flying off. Pretty harmless.
Though not all of them were that benign. Several people were 'jumped' by ghostly muggers, robbed by ghostly baclava-burglers, or even ghostly car-jackers.
This time, the alert was for some creeper ghosts in biker jackets and motorcycles harassing people on the highway.
It seemed like every-which-way there was something new ready to pop out and scare people.
But she alternated between the city alerts and her internet tabs. Despite the numerous attacks all over town, the 'Phantom Watch' forum was distinctly quiet these last few days.
Frederich Showenhower was as giddy as a child at Christmas these days. This arrangement with Masters was a goldmine! With his extra crystal shards and the expert ghostly assistance, he managed to not only hit Amity Park, but several towns around it too!
Within one night, he'd cleaned out as much as he'd get in an entire month with his old routine! And all without so much as a peep from his 'loyal' new hires.
Truly, ghostly powers were amazing.
And now, he was standing inside the vault of a major regional bank branch, gazing at safety deposit boxes full of valuables, stacks of money, and even a cart of several solid gold and silver ingots! Major banks meant major security, handling significant investment collateral.
But what good was the strongest, most impregnable vault in the world to something that could walk through walls.
Well, metaphorically speaking.
With just a shimmy of his cufflinks, he had his chaotic cohort in crime create their entrance. The monochrome maniac just waved his hand and a black and white door 'poofed' into existence in the middle of the big top tent. Just standing upright on top of the arena's sand.
Then, walking through the door, he was almost 20 miles away in a steel, 10-inch-thick, could-withstand-literal-Armageddon vault.
He basked in the feeling of empowerment, the bubbling excitement at just how easy this all was! All the benefits of a video game cheat code, but with tangible results.
He snapped his fingers and the red-eyed clown beside him pulled out a normal-looking burlap sack from some unknown pocket (or perhaps pocket dimension). The enslaved entity made a brief whirling motion with his hand and every stack of cash, every safety deposit box, everything went sailing into the air, forming a small tornado funneling down into the sack's endless depths.
He looked at his watch. Barely a minute and he'd already cleaned the place dry! Then, it would be as simple as walking out the same mind-boggling door he'd come in through. No security footage, no guards, no messes! No links back to him!
And all the money he could hoard!
He cackled to himself as he sauntered back to the safety of his circus tent through the door.
Behind him, Laughing Jack's eyes flickered briefly to an obsidian black before the blank red returned.
William Lancer sighed blearily as he walked home that evening. He was dead-tired from his job, the typical adult worries of insurance and mortgages, and now ghost attacks and crime-sprees.
He looked forward to a nice cup of tea, some classic literature, and maybe indulging in a take-out order from the sandwich shop a block away from his house.
Frankly, dealing with his students today just felt more frustrating than usual. Teaching teenagers had its upsides; seeing students understand the material, grow as human beings, and walk across the graduation stage with prospects in their future was rewarding. Of course, it also came with diminishing attention spans, hormonal angst, disrespectful attitudes, and hours and hours of grinding through barely-legible thought-vomit essays.
Today, was just one of those draining days, he supposed. Whether it was the lesson just not seeming to 'click' with any of them, or perhaps Mr. Fenton's repeated absences. He went through the additional measure to file the boy's absence with other teachers, but it had been almost three days now. "Family Emergency" or not, there were limits.
And through it all, something just kept bothering him about that young man, the more he thought about it. The absences and tardiness, while 'teenage' things to do, it was all barely skimming the line of a mandatory parent-teacher conference at this point. Possibly suspension, but first he had to actually meet the boy's parents.
He expected some level of parental involvement when Mr. Fenton came in sick. It was obvious at a first glance and smell that he wasn't well. No parent would let their kid walk out the front door like that, much less in sunglasses and a parka-sized sweat shirt. He was gone for almost a full week to recover, for the Bard's sake. This was not some stomachache or a flu.
But now he was gone without a by-your-leave.
Mr. Foley and Ms. Manson seemed to have his excuse set up, but it didn't hold water. He wasn't an educator for over 25 years for nothing. He'd checked in with the front office and no one had heard from his parents or this supposed 'college age sister' calling in for him.
Truancy was not something he took lightly.
"Hsssss!"
He was brought out of his musings by a high-pitched, threatening hiss from deep in an alley he passed by. Looking down, he found a pair of rats fighting each other over a particularly bright piece of candy on the ground.
In a slightly repulsed fascination at nature's laws at work, he watched the smaller and weaker of the two retreat. The larger gnashed its long teeth at it, giving a few more hackle-raised hisses for good measure, before plucking the red treat in its mouth and scurrying off.
He was about to dismiss the small spectacle when something in the alley caught his eye.
A blur, possibly a trick of the light and shadows, black on white, against a long stretch of blank wall that was gone as soon as he'd looked at it, but below that blur was something else that gave him pause.
A backpack?
Not much to go off of, but it was a rather distinct, very familiar purple backpack lying against a wall like someone had carelessly thrown it away.
His logical mind told him to leave, just not be bothered with it. He could be accused of stealing it, or be caught rifling through it like some junkie.
It could be nothing. It might not even be the backpack he thought of at all.
If Agatha Christi and his occasional trysts into crime-fiction novels taught him anything, it could very well be a 'drug drop', or filled with illegal firearms, or worse. He shouldn't be involved in the slightest, best leave it be. Yes?
But the more curious part of his mind won out, under a veil of morality. An obligation to see a student's possessions returned. A passive intrigue in finding it in the first place.
And, though he didn't really put much stock into it… a slight sixth sense that made the few hairs he had left on the back of his head prickle.
He knelt beside the backpack, inspecting it. Brushing aside some speckles of shredded black paper, he found the name 'FE-TON' clearly labeled in marker against the purple fabric, the 'N' being worn away.
He hesitated a moment before prying open the zipper to the main pouch. Casper High's standard schoolbooks were inside, along with a hastily crumpled set of papers. Smoothing them out, he frowned as 'Danny Fenton' was clearly at the top of the book report he had issued just the other day.
So, for a boy supposedly 'at home', how did his backpack get all the way over here?
He looked down the alleyway for a sign of anyone, but aside from himself, the alley was empty. He sighed, the uneasy feeling on the back of his neck promising to put off his plans for a cozy evening.
He walked out of the alleyway, purple backpack in hand with every intention of keeping it to return to the boy as soon as he could.
…
The alley behind him was completely vacant.
A large, lanky shadow passed over a large rat. Laying quietly still, with a half-gnawed blood-red candy beside it.
AN: Things are in motion!
